November 2010
VINCENT AND THE VILLAGE PEOPLE
~ Skipping towards Gomorrah ~
MICHAEL McGRADE
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last/Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" queried William Yeats at the conclusion of his poem "The Second Coming" (1919). Today, we can assuredly answer that the "rough beast" has evolved "at last" into the unrestrained hedonism of the West. It is not, however, slouching towards Bethlehem. Rather, the nihilistic "beast" is heading for Gomorrah - with a spring in its step.
Yeats himself might have guessed at this eventuality. But I doubt he would have anticipated the leading role of the Catholic hierarchy in the moral decline, spiritual decay and dissolution of hierarchy, family and religion that characterises the depraved denouement we are facing.
The unspeakable treachery at play here is embodied in the long-running scandal of the sacrilegious 'gay' Masses being held twice monthly by the Soho Masses Pastoral Council (SMPC), at the church of Our Lady of the Assumption & St Gregory, Warwick Street, Soho. Fortunately, when the Soho Masses became a major focus of media attention in the run-up to the papal visit, we were able to counter homosexual disinformation and allay confusion in the blogosphere by referring internet bloggers to our detailed articles on the Masses which we have tracked closely for a number of years.(1) It is important, therefore, that we now update our chronicle.
Revealing blog
Happily, Christian Order and The Flock are no longer the lone voices of protest in this pivotal saga. Others have become emboldened to speak out about the Masses. They were recently the subject of a Catholic Herald blog article by Dr William Oddie , for instance.(2) A former editor of the Herald, Dr Oddie is one of the few people prepared to risk the inevitable shrieks of "homophobia" in order to publicly remind Archbishop Vincent Nichols of his sacred duties: to provide authentic pastoral care for homosexuals in his diocese, and also to protect the Blessed Sacrament from sacrilege - which, to date, he has dismally failed to do, on both counts.
As a measure of the high stakes involved in this pivotal affair and the heat it generates, Dr Oddie later commented in the September FAITH magazine: "The [July] blog was brief, a mere 426 words. The comments, passionate on both sides of the argument, added up to a word count of nearly 11,000 after a week, and they [are] still coming in…."
Just as revealing were the comments posted by Soho Mass attendees in response to the Oddie article, all of whom openly displayed their opposition to Catholic teaching on homosexuality: usually dismissed as mere "Vatican doctrine" to be rejected at will. Other comments from those who have attended the Masses, but are not supportive of the dissent, were also very instructive:
My friends and I were there at Warwick Street a few years ago when those Masses began. I myself chatted with various members of the Gay Attendees after Mass. All of them that I spoke to admitted that they were practising sex. Two Lesbians told me that they were very much in love and to defend their undying love for each other, they told me that they have been sleeping together, sharing the same bed for over 20 years. I have seen men actually kissing in the congregation. I actually seen [sic] with my own eyes, a man fondling another man's backside, rubbing him and squeezing him on the way up to Holy Communion. I have witnessed overt flirting amongst homosexuals. They seem to get extra flirty when Fr Timothy Radcliffe is the celebrant ...
And from another blogger:
I can confirm, as one who went along to one of these Masses, and then went "downstairs" (to the hall underneath the church) for tea afterwards, that the vast majority of the men there were quite open a) about their dissent from Church teaching; b) their disliking of the Pope; c) the fact that they had "boyfriends".
Since moving the Masses from St Anne's Anglican Church, Soho, to Warwick Street in 2007, both Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor and Archbishop Vincent Nichols have regularly received detailed evidence of this flagrant dissent and sacrilegious behaviour which underpins and surrounds them. Yet in spite of this, they have steadfastly refused to intervene. On the very rare occasions that anyone has received replies from Westminster on this matter, the usual tactic is to deny that there is any problem. One such letter, written in August this year by Archbishop Nichols, disingenuously states:
The Mass in Warwick Street is a regular evening Parish Mass. It is supported by Catholics who are, by their own description, of a homosexual orientation. It is a proper attempt to draw these people into the life of a parish and the life of the Church. The Mass is properly celebrated and the Vicar General of the Diocese has clear responsibility for what goes on there. May I gently suggest that you might pray for all who struggle to be part of the Catholic Church and conform their lives accordingly ....
Leaving aside the patronising assumption that the recipient of the letter has not been praying for all concerned throughout this scandal, the detailed and irrefutable evidence of dissent which has been sent to Westminster shows up Archbishop Nichols' ongoing pretence that these Masses are a "proper attempt" to draw people into the life of the Church, or that those who attend them are "struggling" to "conform their lives" to the teaching of the Church. The overwhelming evidence screams that the only struggle taking place at these Masses is the struggle to conform the Catholic Church to the dictates and aims of the "gay" lobby, whose body-and-soul destroying agenda His Grace is now facilitating with all the arrogance and disregard of a common hireling who has abandoned his flock.
Scandal sheet
For the record, and to underline both the depravity and gravity of the situation promoted by the episcopate, here is a summary list of SMPC scandals that the Archbishop and his predecessor have chosen to ignore, despite the provision of hard evidence:
• The annual 'Gay Pride' rally, parading every kind of lewd and crude perversion on the streets of London, continues to be promoted each year in the SMPC newsletter and Mass leaflets. The SMPC also continues to support and take a stall at this event, where it hands out misleading information on the Church's teaching on homosexuality to those attending the rally. At this year's 'Sunday after Pride' Mass, held the day after the rally, a rainbow 'gay' flag was draped over the altar during Mass.
• The SMPC newsletter has advertised a "Soho Masses Younger Adults Group," and named Kudos, a 'gay' bar in Charing Cross, as one of the meeting places for the group. A description of this bar in a London entertainments guide website reads: "Kudos, situated just up the road from Heaven, is an okay bar which is great for topping up one's tequila on the way to the big club from Soho. The upstairs bar has been recently refurbished and looks very impressive and from the street you can see the very mixed, predominantly gay male crowd - one that seems to be older guys and young twinks. Downstairs is a more cruisy, low-lit bar which attracts an assortment of boys up for pulling. The bar regularly runs nights in conjunction with others and don't be suprised to see the odd tranny free-pouring drinks into people's mouths. Not the best bar in the world but certainly not as bad as some I could mention."
So the SMPC Young Adults have been encouraged to meet in a place which has been described as "cruisy" and which attracts an assortment of boys "up for pulling." According to the Cambridge dictionary, that means boys who "succeed in starting a sexual relationship with someone"; in this case involving perverted sex of one bestial type or another.(3)
• Civil partnerships have been promoted on the old SMPC website - http://sites.google.com/site/sohomasses2 - still on-line as I write. The new website - www.sohomasses.com - is currently under construction. Those who have contracted civil partnerships (a euphemism for legalised buggery and other perversions of divine and natural law) are publicly prayed for during the Masses and this practice has been advertised in the SMPC newsletters. Some in the SMPC have publicly stated that they have contracted civil partnerships.
• After the Masses, the SMPC run a bookstall downstairs in the parish rooms. The material sold is almost always of a dissident nature. The SMPC newsletter states: "The Soho Masses Bookstall includes books by laity, priests and religious all closely linked to the Soho Masses community." Among the most recent works to be advertised are two by dissident homosexual clergy: disgraced Archbishop Rembert Weakland's A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church, and James Alison's Broken Hearts and New Creations - Intimations of a Great Reversal. Ex-Dominican James Alison's status as a Catholic priest is unclear, but his dissent from Catholic teaching on homosexuality is well-documented. The publisher of his latest book gushes: "This new book from James Alison has all the brilliance, wit and panache that have made him one of the most influential contemporary Catholic writers. Celebrated for his firm but gentle insistence on facing down current ecclesiastical teaching on homosexuality with the question, 'Yes, but is it true?'..."(4)
• The SMPC has altered lyrics of hymns to include "gay" references and printed them in their Mass leaflets. If Archbishop Nichols' claims that these are "regular evening Parish Masses" then he cannot deny that some people who attend them may not be homosexual, and might only attend due to their central location and time. This being the case, is it right to entice the unsuspecting into singing along with such filth during the Holy Sacrifice?
• The SMPC has also shown a documentary after Mass on the dissenting nun Sr Jeannine Gramick, who was censured by the Vatican in 1999. The Notification, signed by (then) Cardinal Ratzinger, stated: "The ambiguities and errors of the approach of Father Nugent and Sister Gramick have caused confusion among the Catholic people and have harmed the community of the Church. For these reasons, Sister Jeannine Gramick, SSND, and Father Robert Nugent, SDS, are permanently prohibited from any pastoral work involving homosexual persons ... ." In spite of this, the SMPC see fit to use a Catholic Church to promote the work of Sr Gramick, who recently claimed that 50% of Catholic priests are homosexual.(5)
• Fr Bernard Lynch's Search group for "gay clergy and male religious" has been advertised in the SMPC newsletter. No-one at Westminster has been willing to confirm the clerical status of this openly homosexual priest. Lynch was among those heading the "Protest the Pope" march, during the papal visit.
• Some of the SMPC have been shown to be instrumental in campaigning for anti-Catholic, pro-"gay" legislation, regarding civil partnerships, the adoption of children by homosexuals and so-called "equality" legislation, which threatens the very freedom of the Church to speak out on moral issues.
• One of the SMPC committee, Terence Weldon, organises the rota of Eucharistic Ministers and Readers, and is himself a Eucharistic Minister at the Soho Masses. He describes himself as "Catholic, homosexual, and in the quaint old-fashioned phrase, 'practising' in both respects." Weldon runs several "gay" blogs, including one called "Queering the Church" which are updated almost daily with dissent from Catholic moral teaching. There are links to his blogs on the new Soho Masses website.
• Another Eucharistic Minister and a Reader at the SMPC Masses have publicly identified themselves as a "married gay" couple and posted details of their 2008 "wedding" ceremony (in America) on their blog. This also contains details of why they think that "gay marriage" is more appropriate than civil partnerships.
• Past and present members of the SMPC Committee have identified themselves as either practising homosexuals; in civil partnerships or same-sex relationships; openly opposed to Catholic teaching on homosexuality and related issues (such as homosexual adoption and AIDS prevention); or affiliated to anti-Catholic, radical "gay" groups, such as Stonewall. Not one has stated that they fully support Catholic teaching on homosexuality.
• Although no longer listed as a member of the SMPC, the founder of these Masses, ex-priest and "gay" rights campaigner Martin Pendergast, is still very much behind the running of the Soho Masses, and indeed behind most of the dissenting CINO [Catholic In Name Only] homosexual initiatives in England. He also recently co-founded the Cutting Edge Consortium - a collective of secular homosexual and liberal religious groups.(6) Among their aims are to campaign to ensure that Churches are not able to obtain exemption from draconian "equality laws" - laws which have already had a savage effect on the life of the Church in this country (notably on our adoption agencies, to which matter and Martin's perfidious contribution we shall return).
Pendergast used the SMPC mailing list to send out information about a London Cutting Edge Consortium meeting on 17 May 2010, to mark "Idaho Day" (International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia). One of those listed to speak at this event was aforementioned SMPC member and Eucharistic Minister Terence Weldon. The Cutting Edge Consortium also shares the same contact address as the SMPC (P.O. Box 24632, London, E9 6XF). This address is used by Mr Pendergast for several of his dissident and corrupting initiatives and bodies. All the groups mentioned above identify the saving truth of Catholic teaching on life-and-soul-threatening homosexual acts as "homophobia." Moreover, they compound this perversion of the English language by referring to their short and brutal "gay" deathstyle as a "lifestyle"!
• SMPC also promote initiatives of the homosexual group Quest. One example of this is the promotion of the 2010 Quest conference in the SMPC Mass leaflet. There is plenty of evidence of Quest's dissent on their website www.questgaycatholic.org.uk.
• The dissident homosexual group Rainbow Sash Movement announced that it was holding a protest at Westminster Cathedral on Pentecost Sunday 2010 (which in the event, was a damp squib - nothing happened). This group seeks to disrupt Masses and uses the Mass and reception of Holy Communion as a platform for protest. The SMPC has promoted the Rainbow Sash Movement by including its website address in its newsletters. Also, Terence Weldon defended the tactics of this group in a blog comment, stating: ".... I started out by sharing your view that the Sash movement is not helping: the idea of introducing protest to the Mass is immediately offensive. The problem is, when the church [sic] makes no provision for people to speak up within approved structures on matters of vital importance, what else are gay Catholics to do?"
Dissident ghetto
Although the SMPC have made a show of these Masses being "inclusive," until very recently, there has been a notable exclusion when it comes to promotion of EnCourage, which is the only Catholic group for homosexuals in this country that supports its members' efforts to lead chaste lives in accordance with the Church's teaching on homosexuality. For the first time ever, the SMPC have listed EnCourage on the LGBT links of their new updated website - www.sohomasses.com. This has only been done very recently, and is almost certainly a response to pressure, as several comments/articles have appeared on blogs exposing the SMPC's ruthless attempts to suppress EnCourage because of its fidelity to Catholic moral teaching. However, this should not be taken as a sign of the SMPC's belated conversion to chastity. Not at all. It is merely a sop to avoid future criticism. All the other LGBT links listed are, to a greater or lesser degree, of dissident hue.
As the SMPC are always keen to point out that these Masses are part of the official pastoral provision for homosexuals in the Westminster Archdiocese, it is a disgrace that those who strive to keep the Church's teaching have been marginalised, while those who openly flout it are supported and cosseted. Indeed, these Masses are an affront, not only to chaste Catholics battling a disordered homosexual tendency, but to all men and women who strive, often under very difficult and painful circumstances, to remain faithful to Catholic moral teaching.
The SMPC's continued commitment to the promotion of dissent makes a complete mockery of what Westminster diocese initially stated about the Soho Masses, i.e. "Information about the Mass will be sensitive to the reality that the celebration of Mass is not to be used for campaigning for any change to, or ambiguity about, the Church's teaching."
Is this the sort of "unambiguous" pastoral care that the diocese promised to provide - promotion at Mass of "gay pride" parades; of "Queering the Church"; of "gay" activism; of authors who are "celebrated" for "facing down current ecclesiastical teaching on homosexuality" and of all the other horrors listed above?
For whatever reasons, it is clear that neither Archbishop Nichols nor the clerics he has delegated to cater for these Masses have the desire or will to stop the corrupting agenda being enforced in this dogmatically dissident "gay ghetto."
Intimidation
As detailed in past articles, Catholics have been so outraged by these Masses that they have maintained a Rosary vigil outside in all weathers, to make reparation for the sacrilege being perpetrated inside. Recently, police have been called in at the request of the SMPC to "keep an eye" on those praying. And so, in preference to solving serious crimes like murder, rape or mugging, they stand and monitor a few people who come together, pray the Rosary, and then quietly disperse.
This ploy, long endured by pro-lifers bearing witness outside abortion mills, is the oldest trick in the book. It demonises those who pray in reparation, casting them in the role of threatening aggressors, while the SMPC are portrayed as innocent victims in need of protection from such a great evil. It is a shameful waste of tax-payers' money. Undoubtedly, there have been attacks on homosexuals in London, resulting in loss of life or serious injury, and only a sick individual would condone such acts. Yet any right-minded person would prefer the police to devote their time and resources to catching the perpetrators of violent crime, instead of colluding in the intimidation of manifestly peaceful and prayerful citizens.
"Gay" adoptions: the Soho link
Yet another dissident outfit run by Martin Pendergast is his Roman Catholic Caucus of the Lesbian & Gay Christian Movement (RCC). Even the calamitous Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor saw that something was awry with the Pendergast groups. He actually instructed RCC to stop using the name "Roman Catholic" - as reported in the Catholic Times of 10 July 2005. RCC has failed to comply, however, and Archbishop Nichols has never enforced the Cardinal's instruction. On the contrary, he has gone out of his way to kowtow to RCC members in the matter of the SMPC Masses. Out of the five named RCC committee members listed on its website, three have sat on the SMPC committee, namely Martin Pendergast, Celia Gardiner and Sophie Stanes, but it has been proved that all five named RCC committee members still have very close involvement with the Soho Masses in some official capacity. Archbishop Nichols has been made aware of this.
It is important to view Warwick St. as one link in the chain of all these interlocking Pendergast groups, which in turn form but a microcosm of the sterile "gay" macrocosm. Under cover of "human rights," "equality," "diversity" and "tolerance," they channel their unflagging, almost preternatural energy and propaganda efforts - whether in churches or classrooms or the infotainment media - into recruitment, without which the barren macrocosm dies. It's all about survival. And in the process, they conspire to corrupt the Faith, society and souls.
An egregious example of this is the manner in which the RCC wickedly undermined the Church through its opposition to the Catholic Care agency in the Leeds diocese.
RCC wrote a letter to the Charity Commission protesting Catholic Care's application to restrict adoption to heterosexual couples (a commendable application but one which had already been seriously undermined by Bishop Arthur Roche of Leeds, who shot himself in the foot by not objecting to homosexual adopters per se, a fact which the RCC were quick to point out and exploit). The letter, in which the RCC signatories presented themselves as Catholics rather than CINOs, and subsequent reports, can be found on their website: www.rccaucuslgcm.co.uk.
Unsurprisingly, the Leeds diocese lost the case. Martin Pendergast followed up this 'victory' for RCC with a self-congratulatory gloat on The Guardian comments website, to which he is a regular contributor, titled: "Catholic gay adoption ruling is a victory for vulnerable children: The failure of Catholic Care's appeal recognises that church pronouncements on the matter are social comment, not doctrine."(7)
Martin should hang his head in shame. What about the promiscuous subset of "predatory gay men" who repeatedly rape young males and could easily get their hands on these children? "The 3,000-pound elephant sitting in the room that no one wants to talk about," as openly "gay" Los Angeles radio personality Al Rantel put it (CO, Feb. 2008, p. 69). "I think it's disgraceful, and I think the media needs to address this. The gay community needs to address this," insists Rantel with a compassion and candour which utterly escapes the mainstream media and the RCC.
And what of the well documented homosexual-paedophile nexus? Even one liberal (pro-"gay") study reported that homosexual pederasts admitted to 150 boy victims each, compared to 19 girl victims per heterosexual paedophile, conservatively an eight-to-one ratio. While the April 1999 Archives of Sexual Behaviour informs us that "The prevalence of homosexuality among pedophiles may be as high as 30-40%." A further study published in the same journal found that of 229 convicted child molesters "eighty-six percent of [sexual] offenders against males described themselves as homosexual or bisexual."
The hard fact is that homosexuals are massively overrepresented in child sex offenses. "Individuals from the 1 to 3 percent of the population that is sexually attracted to the same sex are committing up to one-third of the sex crimes against children," states Dr Timothy Daily of the Washington-based Family Research Council. "A study in the Journal of Sex Research found that although heterosexuals outnumber homosexuals by a ratio of at least 20 to 1 [in Britain statistically 100 to 1], homosexual paedophiles commit about one-third of the total number of child sex offenses."
Yet despite so many similar findings and the fact that relative rates of molestation put the risk of a homosexual molesting a child at 10 to 20 times greater than that of a heterosexual, in his Guardian article Pendergast fully supported the adoption of "vulnerable children" by his fellow sodomites!
To compound his complicity, Pendergast then also called for the Holy Father to publicly apologise for authorising the 2003 CDF document Considerations regarding Proposals to give Legal Recognition to Unions between homosexual persons.(8) He listed the sections of this document which so offended him: "… the absence of sexual complementarity in these (homosexual) unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons … Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development."
Yet studies like those just cited only confirm the Holy Father's worst fears about homo-adoption: the disproportionately greater chance of physical violence being done to children by homosexuals. Indeed the first homosexual 'couple' in Yorkshire (and among the first in England) to be approved by the authorities as foster parents turned out to be "gay rights" advocates who repeatedly abused children entrusted to them by local council officials too scared of being labelled "homophobic" to stop handing children over (Daily Mail, 6/9/07). Given the tiny number of homosexuals in the country (1.3% on latest official figures published just after the papal visit), and the tiny fraction of that percentage who adopt or foster children, the Yorkshire case is further alarming evidence of the shocking but largely unspoken truth about the staggeringly high (yet totally unsurprising) proportion of "gay" child molesters.
It is Mr Pendergast himself, therefore, who should be issuing apologies for his wildly erroneous and dangerous conviction that the defeat of Leeds' Catholic Care in favour of "gay" adoption represents "a victory for vulnerable children"! As for the bishops and their adoption agencies, they are more culpable still.
In the RCC submission, Pendergast and his cohorts informed the Charity Commissioners that of the fourteen adoption agencies active at the time of the enactment of the Sexual Orientation Regulations, "eleven have found a way of continuing their adoption services, whilst complying with the requirements of the SORs, with various solutions involving some formal severance from the Catholic dioceses which officially supported them but without losing their Catholic identity."
True to form, Martin's definition of "Catholic identity" is rather elastic! By handing over children to homosexuals and thereby massively increasing the chances of their being molested, such agencies and their personnel will stand guilty at Judgement not only of having surrendered their "Catholic identity" (shocking enough!) but of endangering innocent and vulnerable souls - morally, spiritually and physically.
DIY "gay theology"
The hapless ex-Carmelite and mastermind of Warwick St errs just as monumentally when it comes to theology. In the same Guardian article, Pendergast, espouses the DIY "gay theology" he is pushing in his "gay ghetto."
From his pontifical Chair in Warwick St., Pope Martin infallibly defines that Church teaching on homosexuality is "officially recognised as third level in the doctrinal hierarchy of truths. It does not touch upon the primary beliefs that define a Catholic, and while requiring from Catholics 'religious respect - obsequium religiosum,' it may nevertheless be open to conscientious dissent."
He is often quoted making similar public statements. It is all some distance beyond parody: an arch-dissident CINO play-acting the part of a faithful Catholic concerned with doctrinal minutiae, as if it meant the world to him to retain his "religious respect" for the Faith he rejects and subverts at every turn! Truly, you couldn't make it up.
As one chaste homosexual familiar with the Soho ruse explained: "It is all aimed at implying that the Church's teachings are current and transient - and in doing so the pastoral outreach is validating a gay Catholic vocation and affirming the gay sub-culture and its lifestyle for gay Catholics."
SPUC Director John Smeaton skewered this fantastical "third level" (i.e. not infallible) teaching dreamed up by Pendergast to rationalise his "gay" deathstyle. In his blog of 23 August 2010, titled "The bishops must defend life by cutting their ties with pro-homosexual "rights" campaigning Catholics," (9) he wrote:
William May, a leading American bioethicist, exploded that claim, writing:
"[The] magisterium has proposed, as a matter definitively to be held, that it is always gravely immoral intentionally to kill the innocent, to commit adultery (or fornication or sodomy), etc."
The relevant Vatican teaching documents - Persona Humana (1975); On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons (1986); The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality (1995); Considerations Regarding Proposals to give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons (2003) - make clear the Catholic Church's perennial teaching on the matter. Also this past weekend, Archbishop Alberto Suarez Inda of Morelia, Mexico, has taught the Church's objections to homosexual adoption.
So Archbishop Nichols and the bishops' conference of England and Wales need to decide: Who are they in communion with - Pope Benedict XVI and the Archbishop of Morelia, or Pendergast ... and The Tablet? It cannot be both. As our Lord said, a man cannot serve two masters; he will love the one and hate the other.
Going by the evidence to date, it looks as though that choice has long since been made in this two-horse race, with His Holiness as runner-up. Meantime, prior to Pope Benedict's arrival in Britain, both Pendergast and Joe Stanley, the Chair of the SMPC, were interviewed about the papal visit. Their dissent is on full display on the Time Out website, where, yet again, Pendergast trundles out the "third-level teaching" canard.(10)
Pre-papal visit coverage
In the days prior to the Holy Father's September visit, media coverage was intense, but sadly, if predictably, there was a disproportionate emphasis on the issue of homosexuality in general, and in the Soho Masses in particular.
The first programme to mention the Masses was The Pope's British Divisions by openly dissident homosexual journalist, Mark Dowd, who used to Chair the "gay" group Quest. It aired on BBC Radio 4 on 9 September. The Vicar General of Westminster, Mgr Seamus Boyle, was interviewed and stated that Rome has been, and continues to be, "very supportive" of the Soho Masses - in spite of the relentless stream of dissent associated with them. The magnitude of this claim of support from Rome cannot be overstated, particularly as Mgr Boyle revealed that the Masses are supported at a "high-up" level, naming Cardinal Levada of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (a prelate with a decidely pro-"gay" history).(11)
An anonymous Soho Mass attendee was interviewed and said that "we're not here to change Church teaching ... ." This of course is a barefaced lie. As we have exhaustively documented, dissent from Church teaching is constantly promoted at the Mass: in the newsletters, in the Mass leaflets, on the bookstall after Mass, and on the SMPC and related websites. But the most alarming comments about Warwick St were those provided by Archbishop Nichols, who totally ignored the fact that these people freely and openly admit to being practising homosexuals or in opposition to Church teaching on homosexuality - a fact of which he is well aware. Significantly, when asked by Dowd if he expected "total chastity from everyone who receives Communion at the Mass," the Archbishop waffled before issuing a thinly veiled threat: "anybody from the outside who is trying to cast a judgement on the people who come forward for Communion, really ought to learn to hold their tongue."
A brief but excellent report on this programme was published by SPUC Director John Smeaton, who in no uncertain terms told the dictatorial Archbishop that "Families will not 'hold their tongue' about bishop-protected dissent on pro-life/pro-family issues."(12)
The same day, later in the evening, Newsnight broadcast a TV programme on the Pope's visit which again featured a section on the Masses. The celebrant at this filmed Soho Mass, Fr Philip Endean SJ, was recently caused a furore by comparing the new translation of the Novus Ordo to the clerical abuse scandal. All those who were interviewed going into the church made comments which revealed their disaffection for the Church and her teaching on homosexuality. One person stated: "You just have to love thy neighbour .... you don't need too many commandments really." While the boastfully active sodomite and Eucharistic Minister Terence Weldon predictably trashed objective Catholic truth by pushing subjective majority opinion: "The simple fact is that Catholics across the world do not believe and do not follow Church teaching - Vatican teaching - on any number of sexual ethics matters."
Newsnight also interviewed ex-priest Tom Munn, who endorsed Weldon's subjectivism: "My faith is more important to me than what the Pope might think," he sniffed.
In spite of all this open dissent and the Holy Father's urgent Ad Limina plea to him and his brother bishops last March "to recognise dissent for what it is, and not to mistake it for a mature contribution to a balanced and wide-ranging debate," Archbishop Nichols continues to ignore the Sovereign Pontiff. And also Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law: "Those . . . who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin, are not to be admitted to holy communion." Instead, he berates those who oppose these sacrileges against Our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament, telling them to "hold their tongue."
Soho also featured on the national evening news, where Martin Pendergast, who is in a civil partnership with Julian Filochowski, the ex-director of CAFOD, was described as "actively gay and actively Catholic," thus exploding once and for all the infantile pretence maintained by the diocese that these Masses are for chaste Catholic homosexuals who accept Church teaching.
Interviewed at Our Lady of the Assumption & St Gregory in Warwick St., Pendergast pompously declared:"I resist the harsh language that sometimes comes out of the Vatican, but the Vatican is not the Church. The Church is a global phenomenon, and thankfully, the bishops of England and Wales, certainly since around 1979, have developed a very pastoral, pragmatic approach, deeply caring."
What Martin the CINO describes as a "pastoral, pragmatic approach," a Catholic would more accurately describe as bishops turning a de-facto schismatic blind eye to buggery and the dissent that seeks to rationalise it - thereby spitting on the Pope's plea that they "recognise dissent for what it is."
Catholic pastoral care
The overwhelming impression gained from the national TV and Radio programmes was that the Vatican and the Westminster Archdiocese are fully supporting these active sodomites in their open dissent and suicidal deathstyles. The damage done thereby is incalculable. And with this apparent support from Rome and Westminster, the Soho Masses Pastoral Council continues to parade its rebellion ever more brazenly. Terence Weldon has been crowing about Archbishop Nichols' support for the SMPC's dissent on his "Queering the Church" blog, and the SMPC is now publicly allied with even more dissident umbrella groups.(13)
Catholics have been writing to Westminster Archdiocese and to various dicasteries in Rome about this issue for several years now, yet still no progress has been made. On the contrary: the "gay ghetto" in the Soho village is more emboldened than ever; its adherents not only skipping gaily onwards to Gomorrah but doing so hand-in-hand with Vincent Nichols, their increasingly fragrant pal and protector.
It is all so very sordid. "I can understand why sodomy is a sin," American commentator Joseph Sobran once observed, "but I can't understand why it's a temptation." Quite. Nonetheless, in the course of Catholic pastoral care provided to all those suffering from particularly destructive addictions, provision should be made for those fighting a disordered homosexual tendency. But it must never be provided by Catholics In Name Only. Such care can only be entrusted to those who fully and unequivocally accept Catholic teaching, as well as the principles laid out by the CDF in its 1986 document: Letter To The Bishops Of The Catholic Church On The Pastoral Care Of Homosexual Persons.
Our Lady of the Assumption & St Gregory, pray for us.
St Charles Lwanga and Companions, pray for us.
St John Fisher, pray for Archbishop Nichols.
FOOTNOTES:
(1) See:
www.christianorder.com/features/features_2007/features_may07_bonus.html
www.christianorder.com/features/features_2006/features_junejuly06.html
www.christianorder.com/features/features_2007/features_nov07.html
(2)http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2010/07/16/the-scandal-of-the-soho-masses
(3)http://www.qype.co.uk/place/84009-kudos-London
(4)http://jamesalison.co.uk/eng/books/9780232527964.html
(5)http://www.churchnewssite.com/portal/?p=26066&show=print
(6) The full list of aims of the Cutting Edge Consortium and details of member groups are at http://sites.google.com/site/cuttingedgeconsortium1/about-us
(7) http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/martin-prendergast (Note The Guardian's spelling error - this URL address uses 'Prendergast', instead of Pendergast.)
(8)http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20030731_homosexual-unions_en.html
(9)http://spuc-director.blogspot.com/2010/08/bishops-must-defend-life-by-cutting.html
(10)http://www.timeout.com/london/gay-lesbian/article/1493/the-popes-visit-where-do-you-stand
(11) See CO, Aug-Sept 2006, pp.10-16).
(12) http://spuc-director.blogspot.com/2010/09/families-will-not-hold-their-tongue.html
(13) See:http://www.cv4r.org.uk/faith and click on 'Links'